Dostoevsky's House

Friday afternoon I didn't teach, so I headed into the city to pay a visit to my good friend Dostoevsky. Turns out he is dead, but some nice people still let me tour his apartment and had conveniently set it up as a museum.

Here I am outside the front door to the apartment:

On the door to his actual apartment they have a nice plaque with his signature:

Here I am in the entryway to the apartment. Notice the lovely wallpaper and nice umbrella stand.

Just me and Dostoevsky's hat:

This is the nursery. I really like the silhouettes of his children hanging on the wall.

Dostoevsky loved his children. On his desk there is a note preserved from one of his children saying something about hoping to get a treat from him when he wakes up. The audio tour that we listened to had a lot of quotes and anecdotes from Dostoevsky's life mixed in with the information. One quote said something like, Without children there is no happiness.

The next room over was his wife's room and study. I didn't know this before, but for much of his career his wife was his stenog, so she wrote out several of his novels. 

This is the dining room:

Jessica, Megan, and I in the drawing room:

Some of Dostoevsky's cigarettes with a note left on the box from one of his children:

His study:

Me with his study:

After touring the whole apartment in what used to be the apartment next door they have a museum dedicated to Dostoevsky's literary works. I loved how it was set up. The exhibits were all mostly dark with light showing off only some things while other things were in the shadows. It gave off the feel of how St. Petersburg is displayed in most of his novels - a mysterious and intriguing city. 

I loved this drawing of Raskolnikov's staircase from Crime and Punishment:

The exhibit ended with Dostoevsky's death mask:

It was a really cool museum with one of the best audio guides I have ever heard. I learned so much about his life and novels in my 2 hour visit. 

A couple of blocks away from his house-museum is a statue of him, so naturally I took my picture with it:

Andre's Home Visit

On Thursday evening I went with Jessica and Samantha for a home visit. Andre's mom had invited us over for dinner. We had so much fun playing with Andre and talking with his mom. 

They picked us up from the school at 7 and the first thing we did when we got to their apartment was build some legos with Andre. It had been his birthday the day before and he was very excited about his new star wars legos. 

At one point while we were building the legos, Andre decided he would rather show us how strong he is, so he got my purse and lifted it over his head and then went and got Jessica's backpack and started swinging it around. It was pretty funny. 

He got a little bored with the legos and wanted to show us his squirt gun, so naturally that involved him filling it up with water and cornering us while he shot us over and over with water. 

We finally got him to stop when his mom came in and told us to pretend to cry, so we did and he immediately stopped and apologized for shooting us. Then he showed us tons of his toys. You can see here that Jessica is holding about 50 of his toys in one hand and he just kept bringing more and more. 

We worked some more on his star wars legos until dinner was ready. 

We had lamb, potatoes, a salad, and bread for dinner. Andre was such a great host and served us our salad. He also put salt and pepper on all of our food for us whether or not we needed more. He is so cute!

After dinner we had tea and dessert and yet again Andre took it upon himself to pile our plates full of desserts that we were then obligated to eat. Everything was delicious, but there was just so much of it!

When we finished eating dessert and talking with his mom, it was back to working on legos, playing with the cats, and checking out Andre's brand new ipad that he got for his birthday. Yup, he is 6 and he has an ipad. Here I am with Sonya their cat:

Andre and I with the completed body of the ship:

Eventually, they took us back home sometime around 10:30 or so. Such a fun night!

Cruella Deville

The other day in my class I was telling the story of 101 Dalmatians. Naturally Cruella is a key part of this story, so I needed one of my kids to be Cruella. I thought about using a straw as her long cigarette holder, but decided that might not be the best idea for the kiddos, so instead I made a wig.

The original Cruella:

Cruella as played by Tyoma:

Tyoma was the only one who wanted to be Cruella out of the youngest kids, but he played the part very well. 

In my basic reading class, the kids really wanted me to wear the wig. When I put it on they thought it was the funniest thing ever and wanted me to see what I looked like, so I took a picture of myself and looked at it and the kids could not stop laughing. 

Then they all wanted wear the wig and have their picture taken, so here is Alisa:

Ellya:

And my favorite photo of the day, Matvey:

The Ethnography Museum

On Sunday we planned to go to the Russian State Museum. We made it to the correct building - The Mikailovsky Palace - but then we went in the wrong entrance. It looked very much like a main entrance, so we entered and showed our Russian student cards and were given our free tickets. We were greeted by this beautiful room:

We then worked our way through room after room of clothing from Russia and its fellow Soviet Union countries over the many years.

After exploring what appeared to be nearly the entire museum, we realized that we were only in one wing of the palace and were actually in the Ethnography Museum rather than the Russian State Museum, which displays primarily Russian art, hence my draw towards going there. 

Luckily it was still fun to see all of the clothes and things, including this giant horse puppet:

When we left the museum, we rounded the corner of the wing and saw the actual main entrance to the palace and Russian State Museum. Here I am in front of the palace:

We didn't have time to see the art museum, but I will be back soon. Of course, I couldn't be near Spilled Blood and not walk by it, so I made the group take a detour on our way to the metro so we would pass it. 

Love it. 

The Blockade

On Saturday Sveta took us to visit the Piskarevskoe Cemetery because she wanted us to know more about Russia's history. It was a solemn experience to visit it. Sveta told us about the history of the blockade in St. Petersburg when Hitler invated Russia during WWII. There was a small museum at the entrance of the cemetery with pictures from the blockade and Sveta started crying as she told us about how many people died of starvation and other things during that time.

We left the museum and entered the cemetery. Each of these hills you see is a mass grave. The number of people buried in this cemetery is enormous and they all died during the blockade.

Some of the graves are marked for the civilians that are buried there with the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union:

And others have the star signifying that they were with the military:

The memorial at the end of the cemetery:

The eternal flame that burns at the entrance:

We left the cemetery, which is in the northern part of St. Petersburg, and headed south to see Victory Square, which was built to celebrate 30 years since the end of WWII in Russia on May 9, 1945. The memorial is really cool because it is built with three different levels. This is one side of the top level:

You step down into this circular area on the second level with a statue in the center that shows every kind of person participating in the blockade.

The memorial is a circle to represent the blockade that went around St. Petersburg.

The circle is broken in one spot to remember when the blockade broke:

The statue is beautiful, though the lighting is awful in this picture:

The other side. I love that it shows both a soldier and a woman helping to carry people. Gorgeous. 

I love this memorial. It feels sacred, a lot like how it feels to visit the WWII memorial in Washington D.C. I love the concept of the circle with one side being broken and the different levels. 

The lowest level was a museum housed under the monument. One side had a large mural depicting tragic scenes from the blockade:

The design of the museum was also really cool. There were tombs throughout the museum that held artifacts from the time of the blockade. 

For example, this one held cultural artifacts showing that St. Petersburg managed to hang on to parts of its rich culture of music and theater during the blockade.

Under these flags were these large plaques that are changed on a daily basis and display a record of what happened on that day in 1942, 1943, and 1944. 

Here is one of the plaques up close:

On the other side of the museum is a mural depicting the victory on May 9.

The group with the victory mural:

We left the museum area and saw the other side of the top level, which was also incredible. 

V for victory!

Glad the day ended with a happy ending in St. Petersburg.